-, m>

The Christ

God

C HARLES H. MANN

EL

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

ALBERT H CHILDS
YALE '61
MEMORIAL COLLECTION

TD

THE CHRIST OF GOD
THE RATIONALE OF THE
DEITY OF JESUS CHRIST

• BY
CHARLES H. MANN

" He said unto them, But whom say ye that I am ?
Peter answering said, The Christ of God." Luke ix., 20.

NEW YORK AND LONDON
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
3T{je $m:krruocher j|rtss
1897

Copyright, 1897
BV
CHARLES H. MANN

Ubc 'ftntc&evbocfctt press, "Hew IGorfe

Contents.

I. — Wiser in Their Generation .
II. — Rolled Together as a Scroll
III. — The Only Begotten Son
IV. — Without a Parable Spake He Not
V. — Despised and Rejected .
VI. — He Shall Save His People .
VII. — We Beheld His Glory .

PAGE I

2738
66 32
104

THE CHRIST OF GOD

i.
WISER IN THEIR
GENERATION
" For the children of this world are in this their
generation wiser than the children of light." — Luke
xvi., 8.
1WELL recall how I felt when as a
child I first got hold of the idea
that the sky was not a solid substance,
but was only the appearance which the
depths of space presented to the eye ;
thus, that when looking at it we were
not looking at a surface cutting off our
view of things beyond, but were gazing
into the infinite universe. It was as

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sudden and as ample an enlargement
of my mental conception of my envi
ronment as a chicken's breaking its
shell is an enlargement of its field of
life. Equally was this so with the race,
when in the history of scientific thought
man came into this idea. The shiver
ing of Ptolemy's spheres was the break
ing of the shell that cut man off from a
knowledge of the boundless creation
outside the world in which he found
himself. But a corresponding expansion has
not yet come to the doctrines of Chris
tianity. The generally accepted faith
of Christendom to-day does not differ
essentially from what it was ten centu
ries ago. The spheres of Ptolemy still
hedge the average Christian's ideas of
God and of spiritual life. In the realm
of natural thought the civilized man of
intelligence has burst his shell, but spir
itually he is still struggling with the
limitations of his natal prison. And
this difference between the progress of

TKHiser in their feneration

man's natural and of his spiritual ways
of thinking exists not alone in science ;
it is to be found in politics and business
as well. While our business methods
surpass all previous ways of transacting
human affairs, in religion we are com
paratively at a standstill. We travel by
railway naturally, but in a stage-coach
spiritually. It is true that there have
been great changes in religious think
ing ; we might call them mighty changes
— that the Bible is subjected to new
and more penetrating methods of criti
cism, so that to many it has seemed to
be a new book, and has even been called
a " new Bible." But all these newnesses
are not essential newnesses ; they are
not radical as are the ways of our natu
ral thinking ; they are not revolution
ary as are the ways of modern science;
they are all on the same grade of
thought. They are related to past
spiritual thought as an enlargement, or
more perfect adjustment, of Ptolemy's
spheres would be to past scientific

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thought. They do not break the en
casing walls and let our spiritual thought
out into the universe of God, as the
Copernican system does our natural
thought of God's creation. Man's re
ligion ought to give him as grand con
ceptions of God as his science gives
him of God's works. But, instead of
this, man's religion, even the Christian
branch of it as commonly received, pre
sents God as inadequately as Ptolemy
presented the universe, and with a simi
lar self-centredness. As the latter cen
tred creation at the earth, instead of
discovering, as did Copernicus, that it
was centred at the sun ; so in the pre
vailing interpretations of Christianity,
man and man's interests are represented
as the centres about which God and
divine things revolve, and even God
Himself, according to these teachings,
is bounded by human limitations. But
all spiritual conceptions ought to be
theocentric ; that is, God and His pur
poses should be represented as the cen-

"OOltscc in tbeir Generation

tres from which man, his creation, and
his destiny, are determined.
It is true that many deny the doc
trines of the Christian faith, believing
in nature and in such a God as they
can conceive of from nature. Not a
few men of scientific ideas have re
nounced the pent-up conceptions which
I have called Ptolemaic, and in their
place have preached evolution and its
wonders. But such persons do not enlarge our
spiritual thought ; they merely substi
tute for spiritual thought an enlarged
natural thought. The God they present,
if God he may be called, is a scientific,
not a religious conception. What I
affirm is that the world has not as yet at
tained into a Christianity commensurate
with its science. We want a Christian
ity which on the one hand shall lift
us from the limitations of past ideas
on religious themes as effectually as
modern astronomy has lifted us out of
the spatial ideas of our earthly places,
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and yet which on the other shall be a
distinctive and unquestionable Christi
anity. We want to retain all the de
votion, the earnestness of life, the
comfort in sorrow, the strength in
temptation, the repentance for sin, the
seeking after righteousness, the worship
and love of God, and the faith in Him
and His revelation which have ever
pertained to Christianity, at the very
moment that we rise in our spiritual
conceptions as far above the interpre
tations of these things which have here
tofore prevailed, as to-day's science rises
above the interpretations which man
gave to nature a thousand years ago.
We want a doctrine of God's love which
will present it as a thing as grand and
as universal as science teaches the power
of gravitation to be in nature ; we want
ideas of wisdom co-extensive with our
ideas of natural law ; and we want such
a conception of the divine Father as
will enable Him to come inspiringly
into our personal lives, yet which, not-

TKHiser in tbeir Generation

withstanding that personal nearness,
shall be commensurate with our con
ceptions of the whole kingdom of
nature. To that resurrection of spirit
ual intelligence into a really new world
of truth and of doctrine, the Church
has not yet attained.
Yet there must be such height and
breadth of spiritual thought possible to
man. However the "children of this
world" may be "in their generation
wiser than the children of light," there
must be a method and a time when the
latter shall come into their birthright,
when the at-present mightier ways of
the science of nature shall be rivalled
by the then equally mighty ways of
man's understanding of the life and the
teachings of Jesus Christ.

II.
ROLLED TOGETHER AS
A SCROLL
1 ' The heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll. "
— Isaiah xxxiv. , 4 ; Rev. vi., 14.
THE sky is perhaps the most astound
ing of all the phenomena of nature.
Extending above us like a magnificent
dome, even in its sensuous appeals to
the eye it is the sublimest of all sense-
impressions. But grand as is the sky as
an object of vision, it is transcendently
more grand when we contemplate what
it is that looks thus to us, and what are
the things which we find in it; that is,
when we recognize in the objects of the
sky the stupendous creations of nature
in them revealed. In fact, man's present
interpretation of the phenomena of the

iRolleo Gogetber ae a Scroll

sky was the step which most effectually
revolutionized all his conceptions of
natural things. So long as the earth
was thought to be the centre of the
universe, while the sky and its sun,
moon, and stars were regarded as only
attendants circling about it, all true
progress was impossible. But with the
new understanding of the sky a new
centre was recognized, and a new science
was inaugurated.
The natural sky, however, is not the
only sky there is. There is a spiritual
sky. By this I mean that there is a
phenomenon which sustains the same
relation to the objects of our spiritual
thought as that which the sky sustains
to the objects of our scientific thought.
It is the sensuous appearance in which
the things of spiritual life show them
selves to our earthly vision. The ob
jects it presents to us, like those of the
natural sky, are seemingly of small im
port, but also like those of the natural
sky, they will be found of infinite sig-

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nificance when rightly understood. Ap
pearing when superficially observed as
a merely natural feature of our earthly
life, even as the sky looked to the eyes
of our ancestors as though made of a
substance like other objects of vision,
this spiritual sky will be found, unlike
all other similar phenomena, in this also
resembling the natural sky, to have its
origin in a realm outside the earth. The
phenomenon of life which meets this
description, we find in the religions of
the earth, and in the thoughts, the
deeds, and the achievements which have
come from them. These are to man's
spiritual thought what the sky is to his
natural thought. They meet the defini
tion of a spiritual sky because they are
at once an external, tangible, and evi
dent thing to the senses, and yet are
not necessitated by any circumstance
of man's earthly life or condition. All
other phenomena of man's life have
their origin in some circumstance of his
earthly condition. Because man's body

IRolleo Cogetber as a Scroll

must be fed, we have an enormous
number of workers engaged in a multi
tude of co-related professions ; we have
great enterprises undertaken and ad
ministered, and mighty engineries con
structed and operated. Because man
must have clothing and shelter there
are numberless laborers employed, and
incalculable activity manifested. The
bearing and rearing of children, the
protection of life and liberty, the ob
taining of wealth and luxury — all these
necessities of our life on earth, and
others too many to enumerate, are the
evident causes of human struggle and
conflict ; of mighty efforts and stupen
dous achievements, constituting a vast
expression of life in the world. But in
the phenomena of religion we have ex
pressions of life without the earthly
conditions requiring them. We have
the struggle, the conflict, the effort, and
the achievements ; we have the great
structures erected, and the incalculable
activity manifested, but no answering

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need of food, raiment, shelter, protec
tion, or any other thing calling for all
this exhibition of life. The phenomena
of religion thus essentially differ from
all other phenomena of man's life on
earth, even as the phenomena of the
sky differ from all other visions of the
eye. This fact, patent to the eye of the
thoughtful and unprejudiced observer,
has been rarely recognized and, as was
the first announcement of a revolving
earth, has often been denied ; for in his
interpretation of this spiritual sky man
to-day makes the same mistake that in
the past he made in reference to his
understanding of the natural sky. When
in reference to this last, man first began
to consider what it might be, because
he found that every other impression
made upon the eye had an answering
reality wrought in earthly substances —
some of them, such as certain precious
stones, the distant sea, etc., actually
looking like the sky — he naturally con-

IRolleo Gogetber as a Scroll

eluded that the sky itself was likewise
made of a substance. It is only in re
cent centuries that even among the
learned the real source of this phenom
enon has been known. The cumber
some teachings of Ptolemy have had a
longer acceptance among men than the
Copernican doctrine, and even to-day if
we take all the races of men, there are
more persons who do not understand
the nature of the sky than there are
who do.
Much more does man misinterpret
the nature of the spiritual sky. As
might have been anticipated, he looks
upon the exhibition of the religious im
pulse in history either as derived from
some feature of his natural condition or
environment, or as being constituted
solely of the outer things ; of ritual,
form, and observance, and of their sen
suous effects, of which it seems to con
sist. But this is as profound a mistake
as men of the past made in reference
to the natural sky. It is as impossible
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to satisfy the facts connected with the
appearance of the phenomena consti
tuting the spiritual sky by such suppo
sitions, as it would be to construct the
natural sky of adamant. As this last is
the sense-expression of a kingdom of
nature grander than the earth, so is the
phenomenon of religion on earth, which
is man's spiritual sky, the sensuous ex
pression of a kingdom of life grander
than man's earthly experience. The
eternal things within are what manifest
themselves through these varied outer
forms — through words and deeds,
through art and science, and through
the purposes and ideas which character
ize man's external religious life. These
last, which are man's spiritual sky, are
all that the natural man can see of
spiritual things, just as the sky above
is all that the eye can see of the extra
terrestrial things of nature. Gathered
together in history, they give us a mag
nificent natural imagery of spiritual
things. 14

IRolleo Cogetber as a Scroll

For the Christian, applying this con
ception of the sky to his special field of
thought and experience, the letter of
the Scripture constitutes the spiritual
sky.1 Every scriptural character may
be regarded as a star in that sky ; and
Jesus Christ, the centre about which all
the contents of the Scripture revolve,
is its Sun. These constituents of our
spiritual sky overspread us religiously
as the sky does in sensuous appearance ;
and when looked upon for what they
appear to be in themselves instead of
being looked upon for what there is be
hind them, they shut in our understand
ing of spiritual things as the spheres of
Ptolemy shut in our forefathers' know-
1 I use the word " sky" here, not as applying to
the phenomenal heavens rightly understood, but
solely to the sense-appearance of the extra-mundane
creation when regarded as something in itself. The
scriptural word referring to this surface-seeming of
the sky, is "clouds." Hence the prophecy that
"the Son of man shall appear in the clouds of
heaven," signifies the revelation of the Lord within
the letter of the Word. 15

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ledge of the grander works of nature.
Yet for what they appear to be in
themselves the expounders of Christian
faith have looked upon these things
through the ages of the Church's his
tory, thereby hedging in their concep
tions of spiritual things to the very
restricted field of the external appear
ance which they have made before their
eyes. Can this spiritual wall of sky — in
scriptural language called "the clouds"
— which shuts off our view of greater
things, be dissipated as has been its
natural prototype ? May it not be true
that as there was a drawing aside of the
natural sky, thereby giving man a view
of the infinite things of nature, there
may in like manner be a drawing aside
of the spiritual sky, which shall give us
a heretofore unequalled view of the in
finite things of God? As a new inter
pretation gave us true vision as to the
one, may there not be a new interpreta
tion which shall give us true vision as
16

IRoIleo ttogetber as a Scroll

to the other? If we can understand
the phenomena of our spiritual sky in
a way to make it infinite as our under
standing of the appearances of the
natural sky has made that infinite, then
shall be accomplished that for which
the world is waiting — the construction
of a spiritual system which without de
tracting from its spirituality shall rival
the sweep and the grandeur of our
science of nature.
It is my faith that the sky-like phe
nomena of religious life may be re
moved by the recognition of their real
origin. As the natural sky, as a veil to
a true knowledge of the universe, dis
appeared when men saw that what had
been taken as a solid substance was
only the sense-impression which the in
finite domain of nature outside the
earth made upon the eye ; so our
spiritual sky, as a veil to a correspond
ing knowledge of heavenly things, will
disappear when we see that religious
phenomena are only the outer forms
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which the divine things within man,
infinitely greater than all doctrine,
ritual and external organization, as
sume in his earthly life.
If we seek thus to look upon religion,
we must rise entirely above all questions
as to the correctness or the erroneous-
ness of the varied doctrines men hold
in the many faiths of the world, and
recognize all religions as in some sense
authenticated by their ministration to
man's spiritual need. Man's faith has
proved itself such a motive power in
his life, and thus such a marvellous
factor in the evolution of society, that
we are compelled to recognize the fact
that religion itself is the effect of the
workings of some invisible but mighty
power within man, which exhibits itself
in this tendency of his to acknowledge
some principle or authority outside his
life to which he confesses allegiance,
and by whose laws or commands he
holds himself bound. Religion in its
ultimate analysis is, as its name sug-
18

IRolleo nogetber as a Scroll

gests, simply the binding of man to
this marvellous, and, from the natural
man's point of view, irrational allegiance.
Its essentials are, first, that a man's
recognition of any authority over him
be not a matter of food, clothing,
shelter, or other earthly want, but
should be derived from some principle
having its basis outside the conditions
and interests of his personal earthly
life ; and, secondly, that it command
his actual service. Patriotism in some
of its forms has been such a religion
with many. Laws of honor, so called,
have been the religion of some. Any
thing that fills this position in a man's life
is his religion in fact, whatever be its
name ; and anything which fails of fill
ing such position in his life, is as a fact
not his religion, howsoever by religious
title he may designate it.
But the formulated doctrines of any
religion, other than in their substantia
tion of these essentials, and the special
forms it assumes among men, are man's
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understanding of this interior and es
sential religion ; they are only his defi
nition, interpretation, explanation, and
application of it. Religion as a phe
nomenon of life shows its power in a
great measure independently of the
question of the adequacy of the doc
trines its votaries preach. These last
have been often sadly deficient, but
their inadequacy does not invalidate
the stupendous import of religion as a
fact of boundless significance. Reli
gious faiths are inmostly not matters
of doctrine, but are the ministration to
a hunger in man's soul. Seeking a re
lief for this hunger, and finding the
spiritual food which nourishes him, man
looks about for reasons with which to
explain his state, and these he puts
forth as the grounds for the acceptance
of his faith. But for the most part
they are not. Man believes because
his heart is fed and his soul satisfied in
believing, while his doctrines are his
understanding, his interpretation of the

IRolleo Gogetber as a Scroll

satisfaction and spiritual sustenance he
gets from his belief. And in like man
ner with the Church. The wonders it
has accomplished for man's spiritual
satisfaction are the substantial, the real
things of its history. Its doctrines are
the ideas of its expounders concerning
these things.
This breadth in the recognition of the
validity of a religion should not be con
founded with the disposition not to dis
tinguish between the qualities of various
religions ; nor should it be mistaken for
an indifference to the importance of
true doctrines. Different religions are
like different modes of natural life. As
any way of living by which man is able
to subsist must be accepted as a valid
natural life, while between the debased
Hottentot and the wealthy and refined
European there are indefinite degrees
in the quality and desirability of ways
of life, so, notwithstanding that there
are multitudes of differing and often
seemingly conflicting religions, all of

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which are in some degree valid, some
are vastly superior in quality to others,
and are more to be desired than they.
That erroneousness of doctrine does
not necessarily invalidate a religion as a
source of spiritual use to man, is well
illustrated in the fields of our natural
thought. The sun, for instance, is the
supreme fact of our experience of day
and night. We cannot overestimate
the significance of its relation to the
earth which is abjectly dependent for
life upon its coming and its going. But
the theories concerning the sun which
men have entertained, have often been
inadequate, and are doubtless at this
moment inadequate. But so long as
a man knows enough to take any ad
vantage of its daily shining, his false
doctrines concerning the sun do not
destroy its usefulness. In reference to
every phenomenon of nature man has
held, and still holds, erroneous concep
tions, and thus teaches erroneous doc
trines. But however right or wrong

IRolleo {Together as a Scroll

the doctrines, the facts remain with all
their meaning and power. We have
day and night just as really and just as
powerfully whether the theories we
hold concerning the sun's coming and
going be right or wrong. And so
spiritually. We no more do away with
the significance of the position which
Christianity has held in man's history,
and which it holds in his life to-day, by
showing how its followers have inade
quately understood it, or have held to
irrational doctrines, or have even al
lowed their natural savagery to practice
cruelty in its name, than we do away
with fire and its inestimable usefulness
to man's life on earth because the
phlogistic theory concerning it is ex
ploded, or because at times it has been
man's enemy. Erroneous religious doc
trines no more vitiate the principle or
the fact of religion, than erroneous
ideas concerning bread destroys its
nourishing qualities.
Carefully separating, then, our
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thoughts of religion itself from our
thought of religious doctrines, which last
are often only the apologies which men
have put forth for holding to the first,
we find religion presented before us as
the most stupendous phenomenon of
man's experience. No other one feature
of the story of the unfolding of man's
life on earth has so strikingly, so persist
ently, so universally, and so signifi
cantly manifested itself as this. In the
struggles of the individual life, and in
the wars of nations and peoples ; in all
phases of human experience ; in affairs
domestic and public ; in art, in architec
ture, in the general thought-life of the
race, the influence of religion has sur
passed that of every other force in
human life.1
1 The flippant treatment which many social phil
osophers have given the fact of religion in man's
history, pooh-poohing it out of the field of serious
attention, and accounting for it by the flimsiest and
most insufficient hypotheses, causes one unspeakable
astonishment. It is a great satisfaction in this con
nection to meet with the intelligent recognition of
24

IRolleo Gogetber as a Scroll

Gathering before us in thought the
drama of religious history and to-day's
religious devotion and life, the Scrip
ture and the lives of the people and
persons therein recorded, and su
premely the life of Jesus Christ as
the essential centre of all, embodying
in himself the sum and substance of
the whole, we may recognize these
manifestations on earth as the forms in
which are presented to our natural
thought the infinite forces of God in
the life of man. They all proclaim an
unspeakable Presence within, an infinite
and otherwise inexpressible divine spirit
which through them is exhibiting itself.
In putting away the thought that re
ligion as a phenomenon is to be judged
by the truth or the falsity of the doc
trines of religious faith which men pro
claim, and contemplating religion as a
stupendous witness of God's presence
religion as a phenomenon of history in Mr. Benja
min Kidd's Social Evolution. Published by Mac-
millan & Co., London and New York.
25

Cbe Christ of ©oD

within, we are making preparation for
removing the clouds from our spirit
ual sky ; for removing the sky itself as
an obstruction to the eye, that we may
behold the infinite things of eternal life
making themselves known through even
these often unworthy appearances.

26

III.
THE ONLY BEGOTTEN SON.
"No man hath seen God at any time ; the only
begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father,
he hath declared him." — John i., 18.
" Who is the image of the invisible God, the first
born of every creature." — Col. i., 15.
AS the sun is the centre of our astro
nomical system, and as the recog
nition of the nature and the position of
the sun and its relation to the earth at
once broke up the sky as a firmament
and gave us our modern cosmogony, so
Jesus Christ is the centre of our Chris
tian religious system ; and as a next
step after the general recognition of
religion as a phenomenon evidencing
God's presence in the life of man, we
must look for the breaking up of our
spiritual sky to a new understanding of
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Him and of His life. If we can obtain
a really larger conception of Christ —
larger, not by learning more perfectly
in the old lines of thought who and
what He was, but radically and in new
lines of interpretation larger ; larger be
yond basis of comparison, — our purpose
will be attained, Christianity will have
taken the step corresponding to that
which science took some centuries ago.
We prepare to take this step, that is,
we lay the foundation for this larger
conception, by coming into a just ap
preciation of what is meant by the
chiefest of the assumptions of Jesus
Christ for Himself, and the supreme
claim of His followers in His behalf,
that He is the Son of God. And He is
presented to us as the Son of God, not
in the general way in which all regener
ating persons may become Sons of God,'
but in a special sense — an " only begot
ten Son." This is the supreme, the
constantly re-affirmed, and the ever-in-
1 John i., 12.
28

ilbe ©nlfi Begotten Son

sisted-on title applied to Jesus Christ.
Peter's annunciation of his faith in this
doctrine, as the account is given in Mat
thew,1 led to the Lord's supreme bless
ing, and to His statement that on that
rock He had founded His Church. The
first preaching of Paul seems to have
consisted wholly in the proclamation of
this doctrine.2 This was the entire con
fession of faith of the eunuch whom
Philip accepted and baptized.3 Let us
not close our eyes to the vastness of
this claim. Let us not hesitate to place
our grandest conception of what God
the Creator and Sustainer of the uni
verse must be, by the side of the vision
of the seemingly weak and sorrowful
Man given us in Gospel delineation.
Familiarity with the doctrine of Christ's
"only begotten" Sonship and our accept
ance of it from childhood, may dull our
appreciation of its startlingness. But
let us without shrinking place before
1 Matthew xvi., 16, 17.
8 Acts ix., 20. ' Acts viii., 37.
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ourselves the contrast between the Man
as He is pictured, and this teaching
concerning His nature, and ask: What
is meant by this surpassing claim ? and
what is its application to our efforts to
see beyond the seeming limitations of
our spiritual sky ?
Putting aside the unscriptural and
inconceivable idea of two equal, divine
persons related from eternity as Father
and Son, which has been taught in
orthodox theology — since our concern is
not with extra-human or divine rela
tionships, sustained from eternity, which
are necessarily beyond human compre
hension — but with this visible Man and
God's relation to His parentage, we
ask simply: What, as applied to Him,
can mean this awe inspiring claim of
being the "only begotten" when in
terpreted in the light of our highest
and broadest understanding of the
words in which the affirmation is
couched ? We need an understanding
of the subject which will give this doc-
30

She ©nls Begotten Son

trine a position in our minds spiritually
corresponding to that held naturally by
our conceptions of the grander creations
of the universe, the suns and worlds
about us.
If we critically examine and analyze
our methods of understanding natural
things, especially the greater natural
things, we shall discover a law in the
light of which this question of the
" only begotten " Sonship can be under
stood. It is a broad general principle,
understood well by him who has ex
amined the subject interiorly, that our
only knowledge of all objects is derived,
not from grasping the objects them
selves, but from an impression which
they make upon our sensories. If we
take cognizance of a house, nothing
from us projects itself around the build
ing and brings the object itself into our
selves ; not one particle of the building
itself do we take hold of ; but there is
a something which we call light, and
this in a form modified by its contact
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with the building, flows into a receptacle
called the eye, and there is begotten
from that influx a certain image of the
house, an image which may be regarded
as an offspring, a child born from the
house, and that image declares the na
ture of the house to us. If we look
upon a beautiful scene we may describe
it as extending itself out in magnificent
proportions before us ; we may speak
of valleys and hills and mountains
stretching away in the dim distance.
What precisely does this mean ? What
do we know about all these things of
which we speak so confidently ? Only
this : That there has been an influx of
something from them into us, and that
this influx has begotten in us an image.
Our language is nothing else than our
interpretation of what that image has
declared to us.
This is most forcibly illustrated by
our interpretation of the phenomena of
nature, and thence our knowledge of
the great universe about us— an illus-
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tration especially applicable to this sub
ject since we are seeking that very kind
of interpretation, and thence that kind
of knowledge of spiritual things. No
one of us has ever left the surface of
this little globe ; no one has stretched
himself out and taken unto himself a
single star ; and yet we talk with the
supremest confidence of the distance of
the stars, their size, and in many cases
of their weight. How do we know
about these things ? Only this : Some
thing has flowed from them into our
sensories, and has there begotten images
of them, images which might be called
their sons ; and it is these sons of theirs
that have declared to us what we know
of them. So completely do we identify
these images with the objects from
which they are begotten that we use
the language of identity always, and
with the greatest confidence. We say :
There is the sun, that enormous ball of
fire. But the only sun we know any
thing about by direct consciousness, is
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a tiny image of the sun on the retina of
the eye ; and all our knowledge of the
greatness of the sun itself is our inter
pretation of the meaning of that image
— that is, our knowledge is what that
image has declared to us.
This unvarying law, so well under
stood in reference to our intelligence in
matters of natural knowledge, must be
just as true in reference to spiritual
things. The law under which a know
ledge of heavenly truth may be re
ceived, that is, the law for receiving
spiritual conceptions, must be the same
upon its plane as is this law by which
the objects of physical sensation are
made known to us. Every spiritual
conception we are capable of receiving
is revealed to us by means of an image
of the conception begotten in us which
tells us what we know.
This is especially, supremely, and
necessarily true of God. If we would
know our divine Father, from the very
nature of our methods for receiving all
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truth such knowledge must come from
an image of God which shall be God's
Son, begotten by influx from Him into
our life, who shall declare Him. It is
far more conceivable that we should be
able to stretch ourselves out and incor
porate into our being the very universe
itself, than that we should be able to
take within ourselves directly a know
ledge of God. But as it is a divinely
arranged provision that on the material
plane of life there may be created in
our organs of sensation an image of the
universe from which we may have a
knowledge of it, how could it be other
wise, since the ways of our spiritual
intelligence are parallel to those of our
natural intelligence, than that this
should also be the method on the
spiritual plane of life for making known
to us spiritual things, especially for
revealing God to us ; in a word, that
there should be begotten in man's capa
city for spiritual conception, an image
of God which should be called His Son ?
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This principle furnishes us with the
law for a new interpretation of the life
of Jesus Christ, an interpretation which
will give us a knowledge of God cor
responding to our knowledge of the
material universe. We may look upon
His life as the image of God, begotten
in the life of man during man's spiritual
history, and rightly subject to an inter
pretation which shall demonstrate His
seeming limitations to be the limita
tions of man's capacity for reception,
but which shall nevertheless show the
infinite attributes of God vividly por
trayed in His words, His deeds, and
His experiences. In this apprehension
of Him the Lord Jesus Christ is the
very image of God begotten in the life
of the human race during its spiritual
history. By a humanity which God
assumed from man in the spiritual un
folding of the race, and which in the
form of an historical Man, could be
brought within the field of human
vision ; and by the divinely significant
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life which that Man led on the earth,
and still further by the record of that
life in the Gospels, an image of God
has been begotten and born in human
history, and is forever fixed as an
eternal Sun in man's spiritual sky, that
He might through all time declare God
whom no man hath seen. Jesus Christ
is a vision of God stamped on the retina
of the eye of the race of men by the
light of divine truth during the ages of
man's spiritual evolution ; He is the
impress which God has made on man's
racial consciousness. No other kind of
Son could be born of God to be seen of
men, and God can never be seen except
through such a Son. Such a Son, in
deed, is the universal and only instru
mentality by which all things natural,
spiritual, and divine are made known to
man. " No man hath seen God at any
time ; the only begotten Son, which is
in the bosom of the Father, he hath
declared him."

37

IV.
WITHOUT A PARABLE
SPAKE HE NOT
" All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude
in parables ; and without a parable spake he not
unto them." — Matthew xiii., 34 ; Mark iv., 34.
IF Jesus Christ be the Son of God,
begotten in the spiritual history of
man, how may we be sure of that mo
mentous fact ? What is the evidence
of His divine parentage, and in what
language does He declare to the world
His mission ?
No outer testification as to the par
entage and mission of Jesus Christ will
serve our purpose. The evidence of
His sonship must be interior to all docu
mentary proofs ; it must be stronger
than all the words men can utter. The
claim that He is the only begotten is
too tremendous to rest upon such
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grounds. The conception which for so
many ages dominated the Church that
the miracles were an abundant witness
of His mission, and which led to the
putting forth of so many tomes on
" Evidences " to demonstrate from his
torical laws of proof that Jesus Christ
really did live, and especially that He
really did the wonderful things record
ed of Him, no longer obtains among
men. That kind of evidence will never
again serve the purpose to which in
mediaeval practice it was put. Even if
the fact of the miracles be admitted,
they do not prove that He who did
them is the Son of God, nor even that
His utterances are true. But more than
this, the very idea of miracles under the
ancient definition that they are suspen
sions of law, shocks the fundamental
thought of the modern man as to the
eternity of the universe and even of
God Himself.1
1 I would remind the reader that nowhere is it
claimed in the New Testament that the miracles
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In saying, however, that no outer
testification would serve our purpose, I
do not overlook a kind of external evi
dence that has, even to the modern
thinker, a force in respect to a faith in
Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and
that is, the evidence to be gotten from
the influence which that faith has shown
in history. What the faith in Jesus
Christ as the Son of God has been and
what it has done in the lives of men,
has a vast significance. However like
that of a mere man the life of Jesus
Christ may appear when considered by
itself, when observed from its relation
to the history of the race, it grandly
looms up over the lives of all other
spiritual leaders. Critics of the life of
Jesus have often treated it as though it
were for the first time made known,
and were amenable to the same rules
were a suspension of law. Regarded as manifes
tations of higher laws, or of laws whose operation
has never before been observed, there is no inherent
objection to them. 40

limit bout a ©arable Spake 1be not

of judgment as such a life would be if
just presented to the world. But the
life of Jesus as we have it to-day is not
a theory or an experiment. It has been
tested through the ages, and must be
considered by the side of the history of
its influence in the world ; rather, that
history is a part of the life itself, and it
is when looked upon from this point of
view that it is seen in all its grand pro
portions. When we contemplate the
mighty religious drama, or series of
dramas, for there are a number, enacted
in the name of Christ during the last
eighteen centuries, words fail to express
the inadequacy of the external story of
His life alone and, from any merely
natural interpretation of it, to account
for its effect ! The people among whom
He appeared was one of the most ob
scure upon the earth. Politically His
nation was insignificant. His own life
is unknown in secular history. The
circumstances related of Him are seem
ingly limited in import, being of a per-
41

Cbc Christ of ©oD

sonal rather than of a public nature.
The doctrines He taught and the ex
ample He set make no appeal to the
natural ambitions of men. Yet the re
ligion which was founded on that life
— the entire and only records of which
can be read through in a few hours —
has brought spiritual satisfaction and
peace to countless multitudes of every
diversity of disposition among men.
It has held its position as the most
enlightened of the world's religions
through eighteen centuries, and it is to
day the most luminous and vital spirit
ual influence in the life of man. What
is the meaning of this stupendous pow£r
in the life of Christ — a power trans
cending in marvellousness all the won
ders related of Him ? No miracle of
His begins to be so amazing.
Among matters' of sense-observation,
when an object may be looked upon at
the same moment from widely separ
ated points of view, it means that what
appears to our sight as small, is in real-
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ity very great. It shows us that the
object is more extensive than it looks.
It enlarges the thing over the appear
ance. And this is what the widely
extended influence of a spiritual phe
nomenon tells us of its nature. It
means that the spiritual import of what
we see is greater than in its outer aspect
it seems. As applied to the life of Jesus
Christ, this means that there must be
a spiritual significance within that life
commensurate with this vast influence.
But however great the significance
which the influence that His life as
shown in history reveals, it is not suffi
cient by itself to lead one to accept
Jesus Christ as the manifestation of God
on earth ; it can only lead us to be affirm
atively disposed towards the accept
ance of a doctrine which has exhibited
such mighty effects in the world as has
this. The satisfactory proof of the only be
gotten sonship of Jesus Christ can con
sist in nothing less than in actually
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finding in Him the revelation of God
and the salvation of man.
But how shall we look for God in
Christ? By what language does He
declare Him ? Right here is the crucial
question. By what language does Christ
reveal God, and therefore for what kind
of declaration shall we look?
The language in which Jesus Christ
as the Son of God declares to the world
His divine Father, must be in the first
place a universal language, and in the
second place its message must be to
man's soul. " God is a Spirit." All
revelation of God must be to man's
spirit.1 There is but one language
which meets these two essential re
quirements, and that is the language of
1 Science, from the very nature of its field of opera
tion, which is to observe, collect, and classify facts,
and organize the knowledge thence derived, can
never be the source of a direct revelation of spiritual
truth to man. What science gathers religion may
make use of, but science can never itself enter into
the field of religious thought. It forever belongs
exclusively to the plane of natural conceptions.
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the parable. The parable is the uni
versal tongue which is addressed to
every possible human being, and has
been used in all ages for the expression
of what is spiritual. Being both natural
and spiritual, it joins the two. It is
natural because addressed to the senses ;
and it is at the same time spiritual be
cause its meaning is addressed to the
soul. In interpreting the phenomena
of spiritual things, the laws of the para
ble are what the laws of perspective are
in interpreting the phenomena of na
ture. As under the last we know that
trifling features in the appearance of
distant objects of sense signify great
natural answering realities — such as
enormous spaces, vast dimensions,
mighty masses; so in the natural im
ages of spiritual things, their varied
features, whatever their seeming natu
ral import, may possess an infinitude of
spiritual significance — such as heavenly
love, divine wisdom, infinite power. As
applied to the life of Jesus Christ this
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Gbe Christ of ©oo

means that by spiritual interpretation,
and by that alone, can we behold Him
as a declaration of God addressed to
man's soul. To the symbolic interpre
tation of His life must we look to find
the complete realization of our effort to
discover in Him the greatness of God.
Such interpretation is able to infinitize
His life. Under that may His appear
ance of personal limitation be made to
disappear. Thus understood, the indi
vidual deeds of Jesus Christ are individ
ual only to him who receives their bene
fits. To all others they are expressions
of divine truths, universal in their appli
cation, but capable of becoming indi
vidual with anyone who takes them
into his life. When Jesus gave sight to
blind Bartimeus, however personally im
portant this act may have been to Bar
timeus himself, He did what as a mere
fact is of little moment to the world
with its countless thousands of blind
folk who are never healed. Taking the
story in its mere appearance, we learn
46

¦WHithout a ©arable Spake Ibe not

that a certain poor blind man through
the power of Jesus Christ received his
sight a couple of thousand years or so
ago. What then ? In its mere external
fact, little then. Medical practice has
seemingly as wonderful instances of tri
umph. But interpreting the story under
the law of the parable, we find within
and above a truth exceeding all limita
tions as to personality of application.
We see in it in such case not a mere
tale of a local and temporal event in the
Palestine of long ago, but a revelation
of an attribute of our divine Father.
This is the form which the all-illuminat
ing wisdom of God takes to make known
to us that from Him flows a healing
power for the cure of everyone groping
in the darkness of ignorance and error,
that is, in spiritual blindness. This is a
truth belonging to every person every
where and in all ages who is conscious
of his inability to see the truth, which
is the light of heaven, but who longs
for it and applies to God as revealed in
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Jesus Christ for relief — for every such a
one is a Bartimeus — to him is this story
addressed and of him does it speak.
Parabolic interpretation, too, lifts our
understanding of what we read of Jesus
Christ above all the limitations of time.
We cease to think of Him merely as
THEN, and behold Him also in the only
way in which it is proper to think of
God, and that is as NOW. If Jesus Christ
be God, whatever the form in which He
appeared before the eyes of men at the
time when they beheld Him in outer
image, the meaning of that form must
be above all time. All the events of
the life of Jesus Christ, if we interpret
the story from this new conception of
Him, represents God's relation to His
people at every moment of their his
tory. Again, this interpretation of the story
of Jesus Christ lifts Him out of our con
ceptions of space as well as out of those
of time. We cease to think of Him as
especially THERE, and behold Him in
48

TTOUtbout a ©arable Spake 1be not

the only way in which it is proper to
think of God, and that is as HERE, and
as everywhere. His life and acts cease
to be limited to Palestine. It is here
and everywhere that all things related
of Him may take place.
And still further parabolic interpreta
tion lifts Him above all the vicissitudes
of change. The variations to which He
appears subject convey special concep
tions of the divine attributes and ac
complish some special degree of accom
modation to the weakness of man, but
do not represent a changeability in God.
From all these limitations the life of
Jesus Christ is set free if we only inter
pret it under the laws of the parable.
But a strange misapprehension and
thence a deep-rooted prejudice obtains
among men concerning the use of sym
bolism. To many it seems to make
visionary and shadowy the thing to
which it is applied. Though it is ad
mitted by all that the soul is of infinite
ly more importance than the body ; that
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to save the soul was the very act of re
demption — the coming of God to man,
the only thing for the sake of which the
whole drama was enacted ; and though
the symbolic interpretation of the life
of Christ shows that His relation is
supremely to the soul and its interests,
yet symbolism ever remains in the
minds of such persons as among the
unreal things of life, the imaginary and
empty fantasies of the mind.
But all this arises from a misappre
hension. True symbolism is not the
relation of a shadowy mental concep
tion' to a substance called a symbol. It
should not for a moment be thought
of as a merely figurative signification
given to that which is in itself real, as a
sort of artificial addition, an imaginary
attachment to it. Rather, symbolism is
the recognition of the attributes of nat
ural objects as derived from the im
press of a life which transcends the
bodily senses — as stamps made upon
the grosser and less real things of the
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body by the finer and more real things
of the soul. As applied to the life of
Jesus, such an interpretation is the rec
ognition of Him and His life as an ex
hibition of God in the life of man, an
exhibition to be symbolically inter
preted simply because the symbol is the
universal and the only form in which
spiritual things can be made to appear
before the eye. Careful distinction
should be made between symbolism
adopted by man as an instrument for
the illustration of an idea, and symbol
ism as expressing the relation between
God and His impress upon the world.
To make a symbolic use of an object or
of an event as a matter of convenience
of language is a wholly different thing
from recognizing the divine principle
that God's truth in man's life reveals
itself in symbolic form. The one is like
the picture which an artist makes of an
ideal landscape, and the other is like
the impress which a veritable landscape
itself makes upon the screen of a camera
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obscura. In the former case the picture
is the reality — it exists in material sub
stances, being constituted of canvas and
of colored pigments ; while the land
scape is an appearance only, it is a sense-
suggestion which is made to the eye of
him who looks upon the picture from a
certain point of view and in a certain
light. The landscape in such case is
only the conception of a landscape, de
rived from the work of art, and thus
given a quasi reality. But in the latter
case the landscape is the reality. It
exists in earth and air and cloud and
water; while it is the picture that is
the shadow, that has only the quasi
reality. It is thus when we give a sym
bolic interpretation to revelation ; spirit
ual truth is then the reality, it is a divine
force making an impress upon man,
while the symbol is only the form of
the impress which the truth has made.
This is illustrated, too, by many of
our own familiar laws in accordance
with which our souls express themselves
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through our bodies. When a passion
enters a man's soul it may express it
self in his face and actions. These ex
pressions, whether they be smiles or
tears, the contortions of the face, or the
positions and actions of the body, must
be symbolically interpreted in order to
be rightly understood. The smiles must
not be looked upon as consisting of
certain muscular contractions, but as
representing certain affectional states ;
the tears, not as consisting of certain
physical activities and convulsions, but
as the expressions of mental emotions.
And every other special physical action
must be interpreted as meaning some
corresponding attribute or condition of
the spirit. But in all these interpreta
tions, the expressions of the face and
the postures of the body are only the
forms the passion assumes. Passion is
the reality of man's experience in such
case ; the actions of the body, flesh and
blood though it be, are only the shadow.
In giving a symbolic interpretation
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Cbe Christ of ©ot

to the life of Jesus Christ, the Galilaen
should not be looked upon as a man
who so lived that we can get an illustra
tion of certain spiritual ideas, even a
conception of divine things from His
life ; rather the divine things imaged in
Him are God, who in descending into
the spiritual life of man and revealing
Himself in history took upon Himself
the form of Jesus Christ. The sub
stance of Jesus Christ is not the Man
of Sorrows whose form we look upon ;
rather that form is as a vision whose
answering reality, whose substance is
God. The Gospel tales may be regard
ed as sense-impressions revealing to the
consciousness of the race the incarna
tion of God in the life of man.
To many the symbolic interpretation
of the life of Jesus Christ seems to de
stroy the reality of the man. They
miss the delight of that natural and
personal conception of Him which has
in the past been such a comfort. They
hunger for the historical person with
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whom they have loved to dwell in imag
ination as they have pictured Him in
His walks and His discourses in the
Holy Land.
But why should the destruction of
this natural conception follow ? What
we know is that we have in the New
Testament story a surpassing concep
tion of God given in the form of a
marvellous drama to be interpreted un
der the laws of the parable. What
history has taught us is that that con
ception, though often received with
infinite distortions, has for eighteen
centuries and more been the most stu
pendous of all spiritual powers on earth.
In these so mighty, so elevating, so cer
tain, and so complemental truths we
may well rest in spiritual content.
But if one would ask further how un
der spiritual interpretation he is to think
of the natural and historical life of Jesus
Christ, I reply that I do not see that
the interpretation of His life as an ex
pression of the attributes of God, given
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ttbe Christ of ffioo

in the terms of parable, need eliminate
His earthly life, or destroy His body of
flesh. God works by means, not by
magic. In the life of Jesus Christ He
has revealed Himself; that we know.
More than this, we know that His in
carnation in a divinely representative
life on earth is as rigidly under the laws
of order as is the commonest phenome
non of our earthly experience. By or
derly means, natural, spiritual, and di
vine, the Original of this story has ap
peared before the eyes of man. And
since under the laws of order He has
appeared, why should we hesitate to
think of Him in a natural form, in flesh
and blood ? What do we know of flesh
and blood, and what of matter, that we
can predicate what can or what cannot
be wrought out of its substances ? Let
us emphasize our ignorance. No one
knows what matter is. The greater
number of the properties we assign to
it are the unprovable inferences we
have drawn from the impressions it
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has made upon our senses; and the
very most significant of its innumerable
properties is its infinite variation of
form according to its elemental com
position, and according to the living
forces by which it is moulded. What
new, and at present inconceivable, prop
erties matter may exhibit when formed
in some as yet undiscovered chemical
combination, or when wrought by the
power of some as yet unknown life
force, who can tell? How especially
can we know what would be the natural
possibilities of an earthly life, or what
the properties of a flesh wrought by
the infinite life forces of God incar
nating Himself in man?
To the eye of spiritual rationality,
however, the question of the Lord's
natural life, and the external and his
torical interpretation we should give to
it, is subordinate to the question of the
spiritual meaning which is contained in
this New Testament story as it is ad
dressed to us to-day. The message it
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brings is of vital concern to us at this
moment, while the question of the na
ture and the quality of its historic fact
is secondary. If the story of Jesus
gives us a vision of God, how trans
cendently important that we have the
spiritual advantage of it ! What are the
natural laws in accordance with which
this Man has appeared, and the record
of His sayings and doings has been
written, are for subsequent study. The
spiritual meaning of the life of Jesus
Christ, like the meaning of a book, is
the source of its whole import ; while
our natural thought of this historic
story, like the question of the person
ality of the author of a book, or of the
mechanics of its manufacture, is a
deeply interesting, but not the essential,
question. Nor do these two questions interfere
with each other. Our belief in the
symbolic interpretation of the life of
Jesus Christ need not disturb our be
lief in whatever natural interpretation
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should prove true ; nor need our belief
in any natural interpretation of the
New Testament story, which may prove
true, disturb our faith in the spiritual
significance of that divine life on earth.
Whether Jesus should be looked upon
as a material, flesh-and-blood, historical
man, as He has been regarded in the
Church ; or as a representative vision of
God seen in the spiritual world by the
opening of the spiritual senses of the
writers of the New Testament, and re
ported by them as though seen in this
world ; or whether the story should be
received as a parable of God and of His
relation to man, dictated from heaven
to the New Testament writers ; or
whether the life of Jesus Christ as a
historical phenomenon should be ex
plained in some other way, the spiritual
meaning is of supreme import, and is
undisturbed by any conclusions we may
arrive at concerning the natural reality
of the facts of this divine history.
The whole purpose of the coming of
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the " only begotten Son " was to de
clare God and bring salvation to the
world. It follows, therefore, that with
each person the interpretation of the
life of Jesus Christ which gives him the
most living, the most forcible, and the
most saving conception of God ; which
most powerfully makes God a realized
presence in his soul for good ; which
most efficiently leads the man to shun
his evils as sins, to triumph in tempta
tion, and through looking to Him to ac
tualize in his own life the charity which
Christ enjoins, and which thus practi
cally makes Jesus Christ to be ' Emman
uel," " God with us," is for him the true
interpretation, even when accompanied
with misconceptions of the earthly life
of Jesus. For the conception of Jesus
Christ whose truth is shown by its
bringing the love and wisdom of God
into the life of man, is true by a higher
kind of truth than is the conception
which is true from its agreement with
the facts of history. A misconception
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of the facts is not so hurtful as is a mis
conception of the truths they embody.
And this, were the facts unquestioned.
But some know not what to think of
the literal story as such. For all such
this principle of the non-essentialness of
any special natural conception of the
life of Jesus, obtains.
Turning from the apparent objections
which may be raised against the spiritual
interpretation of the life of Jesus Christ
to its advantages, we may in such an
understanding of Him behold Him as
veritably our God. Thus interpreted,
He at once assumes divine proportions.
Not more radically does our under
standing of a star which we had re
garded as a lamp burst its limitations
when we discover that it is a sun, than
does this simple life expand into in
finitude before our eyes when we in
this way see God in every act and word
of Jesus Christ. Time ceases to limit
the story. The Gospel is telling of
God in the hearts of men at this in-
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stant. Space is annihilated, for it is
God everywhere who is described in
this carpenter's life. Personalism is done
away with, for it is Christ in the life of
you, of me, and of every one that the
revelation treats. Thus interpreted our
spiritual sky is drawn aside, and the in
finite things of God are seen in the place
of what seemed to be but an impene
trable veil before our spiritual vision.
But does the life of Jesus Christ bear
this interpretation ? When we read of
Him and of all that He did and said, do
we find a spiritual meaning in His his
tory ? Does the symbolic method prac
tically apply to Him ? If so, how can
the various seemingly undivine relation
ships which He has sustained to man on
earth be accepted as visions of the Son
of God ? How shall we understand the
humiliating features of His life? How
can such things as His prayer to God be
understood in one who under the inter
pretation of the parable is the very mani
festation of God Himself ? And is He
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not our Saviour? What is redemption
under symbolic interpretation? And
how can He reveal the glory of God
from His non-glorious life? In a word,
as thus interpreted, what shall be our
understanding of the limitations of
Jesus Christ and of the salvation He
wrought, and where is the glory He
brought forth to view ?
I am well aware that the doctrine that
the life of Jesus Christ, if we look for
God in Him, will actually be found to
be a Parable of God is thus far an as
sumption. Whether the story actually
responds to such an interpretation can
only be demonstrated by making the
examination ; and he who seeks God
revealed in the symbolic interpretation
of the life of Christ will surely find Him
there to his own boundless spiritual
comfort. He will find in the transcen
dent love which Jesus exhibits a sur
passing image in human form of the love
of God. The divine Father is to be
thought of as moved in His own infin-
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ite degree by a love whose tenderness
and unselfishness are finited to our com
prehension in the love of Jesus Christ.
The wisdom of those incomparable dis
courses, to obey which leads man to the
supreme heights of spiritual living, can
be received as a limited, a veritable
man-shaped and man-sized picture of
the wisdom of God. And in the deeds
of mercy of Jesus Christ, in His acts of
healing the sick, cleansing the lepers,
feeding the hungry, freeing those
possessed by evil spirits, and calming
the sea, we have visions revealing to us
in comprehensible adaptations to our
understanding, the attributes of the
power of God, which is ever in like man
ner operating in the life of man to
redeem him from his spiritual evils.
Every event in the life of Jesus Christ
thus interpreted will bring to light the
working of God in man's own life, and
through that illumination he will find
God, not afar off, but close by, even at
the centre of his own being.
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The detailed treatment of that divine
history is beyond the scope of my pres
ent work. I will content myself with
presenting further only some of the
general principles which everyone
should observe as through the symbol
he is seeking God in Jesus Christ.

65

V.
DESPISED AND REJECTED
" When we shall see him, there is no beauty that
we should desire him." — Isaiah liii., 2.
THE natural man finds his every an
ticipation as to what a revelation
from God should be, violated by the
doctrine that Jesus Christ is He. Is
not God omnipotent ? he asks. But
where is the omnipotence of this Man ?
Is not God the King of kings ? But
where is the royalty of Jesus Christ?
But in the spiritual apprehension of
the subject certain laws of tremendous
import, generally unknown or ignored,
make the image in which God appears
before the eyes of men the reverse of
all natural anticipation.
As a first principle, it should never be
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forgotten that the worldly greatness or
insignificance of Him who claims to be
the Son of God has in itself no weight
whatever in determining whether that
claim be true, thus whether He be
adapted to bring a worthy conception
of God and thence God Himself to the
thought, the life, and the affections of
man. As in a work of art the size of
the work does not determine its artistic
value, but the quality of the artist's con
ception and the perfection with which
it is made visible, so the external great
ness of God's Son has no bearing on the
question as to whether or not He is in
very truth His Son.
Like every other spiritual principle
this is illustrated by a corresponding
natural law. In revealing itself to man
the whole realm of nature is limited to
a circle of about three quarters of an
inch in diameter at the back of his eye,
within whose tiny boundaries must be
displayed all its beauty and its grandeur.
Yet small as this space is, under the
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law for the interpretation of sense-im
pressions, it is ample. Equally does
this law apply in the revelation of
spiritual things. The image in man
through which God is presented is nec
essarily as limited as man is limited.
But this limitation has no significance
whatever as indicating a similar limita
tion in God whose Son is in this way
presented to us. Interpretation can
give infinite proportions to what is re
vealed in the very tiniest image. Going
out-of-doors on a clear evening we see
above our heads what appear to be
little dots of fire — appearances often
less striking than the street lamps near
by. But these insignificant-looking
sparks are the images in which the in
finitudes of God's universe are revealed
to us. Those infinitesimal-appearing
things are suns and worlds. Interpre
tation has taught us what they are.
But what interpretation has done for
the phenomena of nature, it can do for
the phenomena of religion as well.
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However limited may appear this only
begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, that
seeming limitation is only from the
limitation of man's capacity to repro
duce an image of God. Interpretation
can give divine proportions to that life
naturally so restricted, the extent of
which will be limited only by our
capacity for understanding God.
To many it seems as if we had in the
scenery of nature the most effective
imagery in which to clothe a revelation
of God. But while the things of nature
do represent to men ideas of certain
divine attributes, as a representation of
God in any full and complete sense,
especially in His relation to man, they
are wholly inadequate. We could
hardly delude ourselves with a greater
fallacy than to assign to the scenery of
nature so pre-eminent a function. The
majesty of the mountains and the im-
pressiveness of the ocean — while con
veying to the beholder a conception of
divine power and a corresponding sense
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of his own littleness, and some other
ideas of God — lack this first essential of
that which would represent God in a
plenary way, inherent quality ; for their
power to represent God is derived from
the resultant effect of their combination
of parts, and not from the interior
quality of their constitution. A moun
tain is only an accumulation of pebbles,
or a massing of rocks and earth, which
when considered in detail, or in small
quantities, suggest nothing more divine
than what pertains to every commonest
object of sense. In fact the impressive-
ness of the mountain is only the effect
of its image begotten in the eye, and
represents nothing whatever really per
taining to the mountain. This is to be
considered as a mere dead thing which,
if it gives us a conception of God at all,
does so because arousing in us a senti
ment which has its origin in our own
hearts. A rose-bush because it is on a
higher plane of creative expression,
represents the life of God more truly
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than do the very Himalaya Mountains,
and a man as an expression of God is
greater than all the mountains of the
earth. Instead of great dead things, or
things, however big, of low organic
structure being best adapted to give
man a conception of God, He must be
represented by that which from its in
herent quality and in its veriest detail
expresses Him. An adequate repre
sentation of God must express divinity
to its finger-tips, so that a single particle
of it will show His attributes. Such an
expression can be given in a way to
reach us efficiently only in the highest
terms of creative manifestation. As
we look out into the world we find crea
tion exhibited in grades. Lowest is
the mineral, above that is the vegetable,
then the animal, and high above the
animal is man. God is infinitely above
all. Where should we look logically
for an adequate expression of Him other
than in the highest of His creations, in
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man ? God cannot be most efficiently
expressed in minerals however great be
their masses, since minerals are the
very lowest things of nature ; nor in the
vegetable, which is the very humblest
expression of an appearance of life ; nor
yet in the mere animal, which possesses
no moral life, and is inferior to man.
If God would reveal himself to us as a
Being above us, He must construct the
form in which He would make Himself
known out of the very highest and the
best of the things which He has made,
and the very height of all that He has
made, which has come within the field
of our vision, is character. This is the
surpassing pearl compared with which
all other things sink into insignifiance.
Mountains and oceans, the forests and
all the glories of vegetation, and all
other works of nature, are relatively as
nothing when compared with the glory
and the honor which pertain to heavenly
character, the inestimable possible pos
session of a man. If God would with
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the greatest efficiency present Himself
before our eyes, in the terms of human
character He has the supreme language
for His purpose. It is true that before
God appeared as a man the insignia of
nature were made to serve His purpose,
and in the thunders of Sinai He made
himself known to the Jews. But this
was only a suggestion of His power ; it
was not a manifestation of Himself ; it
could not draw man's heart to Him.
God is after man's heart. Nothing less
than the very best love we can be in
duced to give Him will satisfy Him,
and this love is not called forth by any
less an exhibition of God than that dis
played in a man — in Jesus Christ.
Some have supposed that even if rep
resented by a man, that man must be
free from every even seeming weakness,
wholly above being affected by the
machinations of wicked men, and with
a nature infinitely self-contained, in or
der to represent God.
But if one would rightly interpret
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the life of Jesus Christ in the light of
the doctrine that He is the " only be
gotten Son," he must never forget that
the Son of God, in the form in which
He can appear before the eyes of man,
cannot represent God as He is in Him
self. As He is in Himself God trans
cends every possible apprehension of
man. " No man hath seen God at any
time." God as He is in Himself was
never a babe, nor a boy twelve years
of age, nor a man of sorrows. It is
God as He is in man's life that is repre
sented by these degrees in the growth
of Jesus Christ. It is the hold that we
have given God in our hearts that is the
subject of temptation, of sorrow, that
is persecuted, suffers, is crucified and
rises from the dead, and redeems us
from our sins. No true judgment con
cerning the divine nature of Jesus
Christ, nor any satisfactory law for the
interpretation of His life as the " only
begotten Son " of God, is possible ex
cept in the light of this principle de-
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fining the meaning of the doctrine that
Jesus Christ is God.
The image in which God reveals him
self to man's eyes must be according to
the position which He actually occu
pies in man's heart. Such image, there
fore, is necessarily the representation of
the glory or the shame of the place
man has given the attributes of God in
his life. If man should make divine
love his king, that is, should make the
laws of divine love the laws of his con
duct among men, doubtless God in ap
pearing to him in such case would
assume the form of outer royalty. But
when man places self-love first, and the
love of God last, thus holding divine
things in contempt, and making all that
is spiritual in himself weak and miser
able until it cries in distress for help,
then must the Son of God, that " image
of the invisible God " begotten in hu
man history to reveal God, in Scripture
language " to declare Him," in like
manner appear in obscurity and con-
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tempt. For if before the eyes of such
a man the Son presented himself as out
wardly powerful and prosperous, He
would represent God as possessing the
passions and selfishness which power
and prosperity in such a state of man's
life would signify. Therefore according
as man is spiritually distorted, corre
spondingly distorted must appear the
image of God before his eyes.
At the time of the advent of God
into the life of man in the person of
Jesus Christ, the world was at its fur
thest distance from the divine Father.
All spiritual conceptions were as things
despised. A divine entrance into such
a state of degradation could show itself
only in a form humble, a form not such
as the natural man could desire. The
poverty, the sorrow, the obscurity, and
the weakness of the outer life of the
Son of God were from the debased
spiritual conditions of mankind at that
time. Yet that is necessarily the very
time in man's history in which the Lord
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can appear in external imagery. Only
to a people in which religion had be
come so externalized that it consisted
wholly in mere acts of the body could
God reveal himself in bodily form.
Since He could not appeal to their
spiritual perceptions, He appealed to
their bodily senses. When there are
no children to respond, the very stones
cry out. Presenting himself to the Jews,
the Son must represent God according
to the position which had actually been
given the attributes of God by that peo
ple ; but since every man, in every age
of the world, at the beginning of his
regeneration, is spiritually like the Jews,
Christ by this same presentation repre
sents God for every individual as well.
But the power of Christ in removing
infirmities, and the glory of His prom
ises to His disciples, represent the re
deeming power of His truth when
received into the life, and the position
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In His life on earth Jesus Christ
passed through many variations of state
between the manger, the cross, and the
resurrection. These represent varying
states in man's reception of God. God
in man's life is at one time as a babe, or
a young child ; at another He is Christ
tempted and suffering, wrestling with
doubt, and with the attacks of man's
own self-love ; again He is Christ heal
ing from sickness, and still again God
in man is Christ rising from the tomb.
A man is apt to be consciously most
moved by the contemplation of that
stage of the life of Christ which most
nearly represents the stage of God's
progress in his own heart. The tre
mendous emphasis which has been
placed on the crucifixion instead of on
other and equally significant events of
the life of Christ, would appear to indi
cate a state of the Church in which
God, — that is, man's consciousness of
God, — was being crucified. The Church
of Rome seems to illustrate this princi-
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pie in its worship of the infant Jesus
and of the Madonna. As the Mother
represents the Church, is it not more
than a coincidence that the Babe and
the Mother should be especially wor
shipped in that division of the Church
which is most strikingly characterized
by an infantile conception of God, and
in which the Church is so glorified ? A
like principle seems to have influenced
the artists of the Renaissance, who so
often picture Christ in His sufferings.
Was not God's hold on the hearts of
the men of that artistic but profligate
age rightly represented by a man in
terrible distress?
But as the apprehension of God by
man will grow in the coming states of
the Church, the more glorious aspects
of the life of Jesus Christ will come to
be known as never before. In the com
ing Church, Christ as described by John
in the Apocalypse will be the represen
tative of the conception of God which
man will behold in worship : " In the
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midst of the seven golden candlesticks
was one like unto the Son of Man,
clothed with a garment down to the
feet, and girt about the paps with a
golden girdle. His head and his hairs
were white like wool, as white as snow ;
and his eyes were as a flame of fire;
and his feet like unto fine brass, as if
they burned in a furnace, and his voice
as the sound of many waters. And he
had in his right hand seven stars : and
out of his mouth went a sharp two-
edged sword : and his countenance was
as the sun shineth in his strength."
Guided by these principles we may
banish from our thoughts every idea
that there is any lack in the life of
Jesus Christ that will make Him less
than the " only begotten " Son of God,
and thus as the " image of the invisible
God," and thence as God. As the
image of a love and a wisdom that are
divine, and of a quality inherent in
Himself, as exhibiting an infinitely sur
passing divine and human character,
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magnificently lovely and grand, and
forever above us, Jesus Christ meets
eveiy requirement for being the Son of
God in the very supremest form man is
capable of receiving in his organs of
vision.

81

VI.
HE SHALL SAVE HIS
PEOPLE
" Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall
save his people from their sins." Matthew i. , 21.
IN the history of the marvellous power
which the life of Jesus Christ has
exerted in the spiritual evolution of
man, no service of His to men has more
wonderfully moved them than that of
Saviour, and to none have they more per
sistently clung. The word " Saviour "
expresses that divine attribute which
brings Him closest to us, and reveals
the supreme purpose of His coming.
And yet the misunderstanding of no
feature of the life of Jesus Christ has
been more destructive of the larger
understanding of Him and of His truth
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than has the interpretation which the
Church has given His saviourhood.
It could not be otherwise than that
a governmental scheme of salvation
should have been read into the Bible
during that period in the history of the
Church when God was universally con
ceived of as being like an absolute
earthly monarch. For nearly a thou
sand years it was the orthodox doctrine
that Jesus Christ was a sacrifice to the
devil. Then came an interpretation of
salvation which has lasted among the
conservative bodies of the Church to
the present time. According to this,
Jesus became the Saviour of man by
suffering in his stead the penalty of a
violated law ; divine law was of the
nature of a legal enactment, being pro
mulgated as the edict of God ; sin is its
violation ; punishment the prescribed
penalty of the law ; forgiveness the re
mission of its penalty to culprits con
demned under it, and redemption is the
sacrifice to meet the requirements of
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the broken law without punishing the
guilty ones, and thus to enable God to
remit the penalty of its violation with
out ignoring His own dignity and the
dignity of the law. The whole idea is
legal and technical, and thus an affair
of the courts ; Jesus is a legal advocate
and a proposed vicarial substitute, and
God the Father is the Judge. Such an
interpretation of the mission of Jesus
Christ as man's Saviour, makes the
disruption of our spiritual sky as a
firmament impossible. It is too man-
centered, too limited and local, too
Ptolemaic. It is true that many individual Chris
tians and some denominations do not
hold to this interpretation. Various
theories as to salvation's being wrought
through Christ's example, and as to
whether or not He be in any special
sense the Son of God, or only a good
man whose remarkable life and teach
ings have influenced men for their good,
have been put forth and have found ad-
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herents. But all such theories, while
escaping the irrationality and the cruelty
of the early conceptions of redemption,
lack their virility, and fail to meet the
intenser hunger of man for a Saviour
who shall be a Saviour indeed.
In the place of such teachings as these
we surely need a new interpretation of
Jesus Christ as our Saviour. The
doctrine of salvation should give us a
conception of God as our Saviour com
mensurate with our conception of God
as the Creator. Where can such a doc
trine be found ? On every page of the
Scripture when we give what is said of
the redemption which Jesus accom
plished the same spirituality and uni
versality of interpretation as that which
enables us to see God in Jesus Christ.
We must understand Jesus Christ as
Saviour in the same way as we under
stand Him as a revelation of God.
Turning with this thought to the
Scripture, we find that both in the Old
Testament prophecies concerning the
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Messiah, and in the New Testament
stories of Jesus, He is presented as
man's Saviour, and His work as Re
deemer is described. Both tell of a
crisis in the spiritual state of man, and
of God the Redeemer as a mighty Com
batant overcoming for man's salvation.
Picture after picture of God as in this
way man's Redeemer is presented to
us throughout the Old Testament. He
is called a " man of war," and in Isaiah
a conflict which He wages with the
numberless hosts of man's enemies,
that threaten to overwhelm him, is de
scribed. " The Lord's hand is not short
ened that it cannot save." " He saw
that there was no man, and wondered
that there was no intercessor : there
fore his arm brought salvation unto
him, and his righteousness, it sustained
him." ¦ Still more definitely in the
New Testament we have the declara
tion of Jesus Christ concerning a judg
ment which was then executed upon
1 Isaiah lix., I, 16.
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the wicked. " I saw Satan," He says,
" as lightning fall from heaven." " Now
is the judgment of this world : now
shall the prince of this world be cast
out." " Be of good cheer, I have over
come the world." ' Elsewhere in the
Scripture this judgment is compared
to stupendous convulsions of nature,3
and again to a harvest,3 and is called
in the discourses of Jesus, the " con
summation of the age " — unfortunately
in our common version mistranslated
" end of the world." The Genesis
story of the flood evidently represents
such a spiritual crisis, as also does the
Lord's bringing the children of Israel
out of Egypt. From all these things it
1 Luke x., 18 ; John xii., 31 ; xvi., 33.
2 Isaiah xiii., 10 ; Joel ii., io, 30-31. [It is re
markable how literalists have insisted on interpreting
these passages according to their material sense
when Peter at the day of Pentecost actually referred
to this prediction in Joel, and declared that in the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit on that day, it was at
that very time fulfilled — Acts ii., ig, 20] ; Joel iii.,
15 ; Matt, xxiv., 29 ; Rev. vi., 12-14.
3 Joel iii., 13 ; Matt, xviii., 39 ; Rev. xiv., 15.
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may be seen that the doctrine of man's
need of a Saviour, and of salvation, is
the doctrine of a great crisis in the
spiritual affairs of man ; of the presence
of the Lord at that crisis, and the ex
ecution of a judgment. When from
the accumulation of evil in man's
spiritual evolution, evil predominates
and the possibility of the salvation of
the individual is threatened, there is a
judgment, and through great spiritual
convulsions the conditions in the spir
itual world and thence among men,
through the continuance of which evil
prevails, are changed, and freedom re
stored. Such upheavals take place in
earthly history, as in the French Revo
lution ; and such a judgment must have
taken place at the coming of Jesus
Christ,1 constituting in fact the great
redemption which He accomplished.
1 " I saw Satan as lightning fall from heaven" ;
" Now is the judgment of this world : now shall
the prince of this world be cast out." Lukex., 18 ;
John xii., 31.

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How Jesus Christ is man's Saviour is
most livingly displayed before our eyes
in the New Testament account of Him,
for it is as man's Saviour that He is
here especially described. It is not nec
essary to go back to some Garden of
Eden transgression for a ground for
man's condemnation, nor to some self-
regarding attribute of God for a reason
for requiring the act of redemption ;
but man's spiritual infirmities are the
ground of his need of being saved, and
his inability to save himself is the rea
son God must do it. The crucifixion
does not in any exclusive sense repre
sent redemption, but through the whole
of the divine life which Jesus Christ led
on earth were His acts as Redeemer
displayed ; for every act of His by
which any man was saved from any ill,
represents the fulfilment of His mission
as Saviour. All healing of diseases, the
removal of infirmities of any kind, the
calming of the troubled sea, the casting
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dead, the preaching of the Gospel to
the poor, and even the endurance of
temptation and suffering — all are acts
of redemption, for they all are ways
in which the infinite power of the Al
mighty practically extends itself into
man's life to save him.
In all these representations it is espe
cially to be noted that man's need of a
Saviour is not from God's condemna
tory attitude towards him, but from his
own spiritual want. The Bible nowhere
promises that man shall be saved from
the penalties of violated law, nor that
he shall be redeemed from the wrath of
God. In the Psalms it is declared that
Israel is redeemed — not from God's
wrath, but " from destruction " ; and
" from all his iniquities " ; and " from
our enemies" and "out of the hand
of the Egyptians " ' ; and in Luke
it is promised that by Jesus Israel
should be " saved from our enemies,
and from the hand of all that hate
1 Psalms ciii., 4 ; cxxx., 8 ; cxxxvi., 24.
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us." ' " Our enemies " and " all that
hate us " are not the penalties of a
violated law. They can mean nothing
less than the very evils themselves of
our lives. Man is not saved from God
in any sense ; nor from the legal penalty
of the violated law, nor from the pun
ishment and suffering which accompany
wrong-doing ; nor is his salvation legal
and technical. Lusts, passions, world
liness and selfishness, and thence all the
wickednesses of his life are the things
man needs to be saved from ; and since
all these may be summed up as having
their origin in the love of self, the su
preme thing man needs to be saved from
is the love of self and its dominion, that
he may be brought into the reception
of God and His divine life.
This teaching concerning Christ's sal
vation, that it is saving from evil and
sin, and not from the punishment due
for violated law, is brought out with
remarkable clearness and force in the
1 Luke i., 71.
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words of Jesus to the man sick of the
palsy. After saying to him, " Thy sins
be forgiven thee," He said to those
who questioned His power to forgive
sins, " That ye may know that the Son
of man hath power on earth to forgive
sins (he saith to the sick of the palsy),
I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy
couch, and go unto thine house." '
He thus appealed to His power to heal
sickness as a proof of His authority to
forgive sins, an appeal meaningless
under any other supposition than that
the forgiveness of sins is the removal of
the evils of man's soul by the power of
God, as illustrated by His power to re
move bodily sicknesses which are the
corresponding evils of the body.
The problem of salvation under this
interpretation is not indicated by the
question, How can God remit the pen
alty of violated law with due respect to
His own edicts ? but, How can God be
savingly brought into man's life ? All
1 Luke v., 24.
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the acts which Jesus did were accom
plished by establishing some kind of
connection between Himself and the suf
ferer; teaching the doctrine that salva
tion is accomplished by uniting man
and God. Man is in the hands of ene
mies ; how can God so get to him as to
drive away these evils which beset him ?
Man is perishing from disease ; how
can God, as the Great Physician so
come near to him as to heal him of this
disease of sin ? Man is being engulfed
in a flood, and is drowning ; how can
God so reach him as to pluck him out
of this inundation of evils and falsities ?
Such questions as these suggest the
kind of salvation man needs, and the
way God provides it.
Under the spiritual interpretation of
Christ's life, salvation is provided, not
by the sacrifice of an innocent victim in
the place of the guilty, but by God's
use of the Son to effect a practical en
trance into man's life for his salvation.
We have already seen that the Son is
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the image of God, begotten and born
into the life of man. This image is the
instrument, the ' hand, or the body,
through which God gets access to man
to save him. And God is our Saviour;
not the Son as distinguished from the
Father, but the Son as the visible in
strumentality of the Father.
In adopting this interpretation of the
saving acts of Jesus' life we must not
forget this first and most essential char
acteristic, that the finiteness and the
limited personality of Jesus, and the
local and temporal nature of His acts
as related in Gospel story, do not put
any limit upon His real greatness, nor
upon the greatness of the redemption
thus revealed to us. His limitation and
the limitation of His doings, and the
limitation of the people with whom He
associated, are adaptations to the re
stricted field of our vision. The man
Jesus whom our eyes behold, or who is
brought before us in New Testament
delineation, is a diminuted picture of
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the Great Spiritual Jesus, the Mighty
Christ, through whom God wrought the
salvation of man ; and the individual to
whom it is narrated that Jesus brought
healing life, should be thought of as
representing the race of man, and his
being healed as representing a step in
the great redemption. It was all hu
manity that was immersed in evil and
obsessed by hell, and it was all humanity
that God through the larger Christ, rep
resented by Jesus and His healing acts,
liberated from spiritual infirmities, rep
resented by the bodily infirmities of
those whom Jesus cured, and thus saved.
The simple tales of what Jesus did, thus
bring before our eyes, in a form they
can receive, a vision of the redemption
which the infinite Father, in a humanity
taken from man, wrought for the sin-
burdened and hell-beset human race.
In apparent opposition to these inter
pretations it may be well to look at the
fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, which at
the first reading seems to teach the old
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doctrine : " Surely he hath borne our
grief and carried our sorrows. . . .
He was wounded for our transgressions,
he was bruised for our iniquities : the
chastisement of our peace was upon
him ; and with his stripes we are
healed." ¦ But there is a scriptural
and thus an authoritative interpretation
of this passage strangely ignored by the
prevailing schools of exegesis, which
demonstrates that this does not teach
the doctrine of vicarious atonement. In
Matthew it is written, " When the even
was come, they brought unto him many
that were possessed with devils : and
he cast out the spirits with his word,
and healed all that were sick: that it
might be fulfilled that was spoken by
Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself
took our infirmities and bare our sick
nesses." 3 Observe that this story rep
resents Christ as saving man by casting
out devils and healing from sicknesses,
thus picturing an actual salvation from
1 Verses 4, 5. s Matthew viii., 16, 17.
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evil by removing it from man's life, and
this is stated to be in fulfilment of this
very prophecy in Isaiah which more
than any other prophecy has been sup
posed to teach the old doctrine.
This vision of salvation in which we
behold God extending His almighty arm
to man to save him from spiritual sick
ness and death, is the picture of Jesus
Christ as our Saviour which we find
everywhere in the Scripture when we
read it with our minds unfettered with
the mediaeval ideas of God which con
ceive of Him as looking out for His own
dignity like an earthly monarch, and as
enacting laws involving the possibility
of technical embarrassments so infinitely
serious as to require the death of His Son
to enable Him with due respect to Him
self to forgive man by not imposing the
penalties He had threatened.1
1 The late Bishop Jaynes of the Methodist Epis
copal Church, actually called the problem of man's
salvation a " governmental embarrassment with
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I have been speaking thus far of the
salvation of the race, in which God,
having come to man in the humanity
of Jesus Christ, overthrew the obsessing
hells, and established a condition of
spiritual freedom and life in which the
individual could be kept in a salvable
environment. The salvation of the in
dividual is accomplished by his recog
nition of Christ as the image of God,
and thence by the coming of God into
his personal life. As to the race, so to
the individual, God comes through His
Son for the overthrow of the evils
which beset him and for his individual
salvation. God's advent into the soul of a man
according to the man's conscious and
voluntary acknowledgment of Jesus
Christ as the "only begotten Son," and
thus as " the image of God," is illus
trated by the way in which all mental
forces effect an entrance into a man's
life. These make themselves felt in
man's spirit in accordance with the

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images created in his sensories. Thus,
how often have men's passions been
stirred through music. Saul was saved
from the oppression of evil spirits
through its influence. It is an instru
mentality of recognized force in the
management of armies. As expressed
in song it has nourished the patriotism
of nations, and preserved many lofty
sentiments among men. Just what do
these statements mean ? In its ulti
mate form music consists of vibrations
of the air. These vibrations received
into the ear excite certain physical
sensations, which under the laws of
representation create in man's con
sciousness an image of some passion,
and that image becomes the instrument
through which, from the world of men
tal states, the passion itself enters man
and moves him.
The expressions of ideas in books
and in spoken language tell the same
story. In ultimate form entering men's
sensories as vibrations of ether or of
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air, they create in his external con
sciousness images through which the
affections and the thoughts that these
images express gain access to his spirit.
It is under this same law operating
in the higher regions of man's soul that
God works. Jesus Christ is the image
of God as presented to man's external
conceptions. As man gives this image
of God a commanding position in his
thoughts and in his affections, by his
worship of Jesus Christ, and by his obe
dience to His commandments, it be
comes, under the universal laws for
reaching man's spirit, the instrument
through which the divine Father Him
self enters a man's soul for his salva
tion. Why cannot God save a man without
the Son ? Simply because only through
such an instrumentality can He make
Himself known, and thus give a man
the opportunity to accept or to reject
Him — for it is only as man in freedom
accepts God that God can save him. It

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is a universal and necessary method for
reaching man both in the kingdom of
his spiritual and in that of his natural
life, that all things out of man reveal
themselves to him, and influence him
through images begotten in him which
are their sons. God .is intensely imma
nent in life ; yea, to use Mrs. Brown
ing's words, " Earth is crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God."
But notwithstanding this immanence,
God does not force himself into man ;
He " stands at the door and knocks."
(Astonishingly significant statement !)
And God is admitted by man according
to the conception man has of Him, and
according to the position of influence
he gives that conception in his life.
By the images of God which men hold
in their thoughts and their affections
does He enter their hearts and save
them from self, even as by the images
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this world made known to him and do
they affect his life. Every conception of
God which a man cherishes in his heart
and out of respect for which he lives
according to the laws of neighborly
charity, is saving. This salvation varies
in degree and in perfection according
to the truth of the conception, and ac
cording to the quality of the sin-shun
ning which comes from it. Jesus Christ
stands before the individual man as in
a supreme degree his Saviour, because
in Him he has an utterly matchless
revelation of God, having in Him in
deed the " only begotten Son " of God,
born into the life of man ; and in Him
also man has an equally matchless
revelation of a life of charity.
This interpretation of the coming of
Jesus Christ into the world, and of the
redemption which is wrought through
Him, is not a matter of legalism, nor
founded upon a technicality ; nor is it a
sentimentalism, a matter of "example,"
a mere instruction in the way of life ;

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but it is a mighty salvation, being noth
ing less than the actual extension of
the arm of God into the life of man.
It is infinite in its application, operating
everywhere, in all times, and in all states
of human needs. It accords with uni
versal laws of all nature, being in the
spiritual kingdom of life what the mode
of sense communication with the world
about us is in the natural kingdom of
life. Above all, it is real ; it is living ;
it is practical. The infinite Father is
right here, instant with His infinite
love, wisdom, and power to enter our
lives, and bestow Himself upon us, press
ing upon us on every side more in
tensely than the air in which we are
immersed, yet with infinite gentleness,
only actually making Himself known to
us as we permit Him by our worship
of Him in His Son. Jesus Christ as
our Redeemer, in this understanding of
Him, stands always before us as an
ever open door of admission to the in
finitely saving Power of God.
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VII.
WE BEHELD HIS GLORY
" And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the
only begotten of the Father, full of grace and
truth." — John i., 14.
HOW can we behold the glory of
God ? How can we even think
of Him whom modern philosophers
call the " unknowable " and the " un
thinkable ? " We need a description of
Him that will meet the demands of our
highest intelligence, and at the same
time will satisfy our spiritual hungers
and thirsts. The presentation of a con
ception of God that can meet the wants
of the spiritual-minded man whose natu
ral intelligence is enlightened by the
science and the learning of to-day, is a
great need which is pressing upon us.
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To meet this need one class of re
ligious men declare that God must be
thought of as a Person. God in the
spiritual apprehension of Him, these
hold, is a Being of love and wisdom ;
thus is a Being of life. But love and
wisdom, that is, life, as we know them,
exist only in persons. Therefore only
in person can God be conceived of as a
living God ; it is only as we think of
Him thus that we can place Him be
fore us in distinct form as an object of
worship; only in the thought of Him
as a Person is possible companionship ;
only in such thought can our love be
moved to its depths, and our wisdom
enlightened ; and in this form alone can
He be our Father. Only in this form
can man's hunger and thirst for God be
satisfied. He thus presents Himself to
us in revelation, and therefore should
we always think of God as a Person.
But another class of thinkers, object
ing to this, remind us that person, in the
only way in which we know person, is
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limited, and that God must be conceived
of as without limit. A person must be
confined to a certain locality, and to a
certain size — things inconceivable with
God. The " Big- Man conception of
God," as it has been called, is declared
by them to be an absurdity. Our idea
of God must be commensurable with
His works. Force, they say, which is
everywhere at work " making for right
eousness " — this is God.
To the spiritual-minded man this lat
ter line of thought is as the blow of
death. How can a man with his soul
hungering for the tender compassion of
God, have that longing satisfied by the
conception of a force, or of an atmos
phere? How can he be fed by the
contemplation of these things operating
on a lower plane than the vital forces
of his own body, however big and uni
versal they may be ? Man's spiritual
hunger can never be satisfied by look
ing down for God, and recognizing Him
as a mighty force impelling him from
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beneath, through the relentless warfare
of unremitting evolutionary battle, to
rise. Nothing less than finding God
above him, stretching His arm down to
bless and to save, will meet his needs.
Atmospheres, and chemical affinities,
the potentialities of atoms, the inherent
tendencies of matter, and the wonders
of protoplasm, will never, with the
spiritual-minded man, take the place of
the sweetness of divine love and the
satisfactoriness of divine wisdom.
Confronted by these seemingly irre
concilable conceptions, the weight of
the argument for each of which must be
granted, the problem of uniting them
comes home to us. Each of these is
right in its way, and each is wrong. A
union of them is what we need, and
that union we obtain when we think
of God in Person, but in infinite Per
son, that is, in representative Person ;
and we thus think of God, and thence
meet this need by the interpretation of
the life of Jesus Christ under the law
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of the parable. The conception of God
as being at once a Person and at the
same time being above all person, even
as boundless as creation itself, a concep
tion combining at once the advantages
of both of these conflicting ideas and
the disadvantages of neither, is realized
when we recognize Jesus as a Parable
of the attributes of God. The limi
tations of the personality with which
we in such case invest God are acknow
ledged in our thought to be derived
from ourselves, but the realness, the
humanity, and the nearness which by
thinking of God as a Person are made
features of our conception of Him, are
veritable attributes of His, and through
this recognition of them by us, is He
brought into our life.
Thus conceived of, Jesus Christ sat
isfies all persons with their every variety
of spiritual need. The child, the exter
nal man, the man of business, the scien
tist, the philosopher, and he who is
seeking an interior walk with his divine
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Father — each may find in Him an all-
satisfying image of God. To each of
these He exhibits a face expressing a
conception of God adapted to fill the
wants of his highest wisdom and his
purest affections.
Thus conceived of, He is with each
individual the all-in-all to his constantly
changing personal states, varying, as
they do, from the cradle to the death
bed. He is natural to us when we are
natural, and spiritual to us when we
need what is spiritual. Thus Jesus,
when spiritually understood, is to every
one a living image of God, growing
with the growth of his spiritual needs,
and standing before him forever filling
the highest possibilities of his capacity
for understanding God. From the most
natural state of the religious man to
his loftiest spiritual possibilities, Jesus
Christ, in this understanding of Him,
fills his life.
But unless we use the symbol in the
interpretation of Jesus Christ, while He
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may satisfy our childish conception of
God, when we become capable of
grander realizations of what God must
be, we are either held back spiritually
to conceptions of Him too limited and
too personal, or we find it impossible to
unite our ideas of Christ with our ideas
of God. How can the " Man of Sor
rows" be seen as the "only begotten"
of Him who holds the universe in order?
If, however, we interpret Him spiritu
ally, the loveliness, the personality, and
the humaneness we need in God we find
in Jesus Christ, united with the infinities
of creation. We have in such case, the
tender compassion of the Man — without
the limitations of man as we know man ;
we have the infinitude of creation, with
neither its spatial distribution nor its
lack of the attributes of the soul.
Yet our apprehension of nature serves
our spiritual apprehension of Christ —
by giving us an outer image through
which we can form a conception of His
infinity ; for in this conception of Jesus

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Christ, as we have seen, there is involved
the doctrine that our consciousness of
spiritual things is the demonstration of
a spiritual universe, just as the vision
of the sky is the witness of a natural
universe ; that the spiritual is as stu
pendous as the natural — that is, is in
finite ; in a word, that there must be
a kingdom of life co-extensive with the
kingdom of nature, which last is in
itself the kingdom of death. For as
the kingdom of nature is known to us
through the witness of our bodily senses,
so, with equal logic and greater certainty,
through the witness of our spiritual con
sciousness, is there made known to us a
corresponding kingdom of life. In the
kingdom of life all is living. The heat
waves which quiver through its atmos
pheres are from love ; the light which
illumines it is from wisdom, and all its
sights and sounds and feelings are the
sense-forms of the states of the soul.
It is the pressure of this kingdom of
life into nature that produces the living

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forms about us which are wrought from
the substances of the earth. The life of
nature is the response of material sub
stances to the inflowing of this living
kingdom. Evolution is the outer ap
pearance of what is really the effect of
the involution of this kingdom of life in
the dead kingdom of matter. As man
is living in both kingdoms he may rec
ognize in his own personal experiences
the presence of both ; and from what he
learns of the character of the dead world
about him, to whose forces he is now
physically, and thus, as to his senses,
subject, he may know of the corre
sponding character of the living world
within, to whose forces spiritually, and
thus as to the love-life and the thought-
life of the soul, he is subject.
Nothing is more gentle, sweet, and
personal in its appearance than one's
individual consciousness of the greater
forces of nature. How delicately the
light ministers to the delights of the
eye ! How is one to realize, as he re-

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ceives the exquisite sensation which a
vision of beauty makes upon the eye,
that the light from which this impres
sion comes is an emanation of transcen
dent wonderfulness, which, through the
infinite realms of space from ten million
of suns in boundless munificence, floods
the universe of nature ? The sensation
in the eye is the impression which this
vast efflux makes upon a man's personal
consciousness. How gentle the pressure
by which one is made aware of his
weight as he rests from fatigue! Yet
that little physical feeling is his indi
vidual experience of gravitation, the
stupendous power by which the uni
verse is held in order, and under the
control of which the suns and planets
pursue their courses. And when one
basks in the invigorating sunshine, the
genial warmth which brings comfort to
his limbs is his personal perception of
the sun's heat, that marvellous solar
outpouring by which life is made pos
sible on the earth and in the worlds
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about us. While all these things come
into our individual lives as sources of
personal comfort and happiness, and
within the tiniest limitations as to
amount and intensity, they are at the
same time in themselves so mighty and
so universal that they fill all the king
dom of nature with their presence and
their power.
If we would have conceptions of spirit
ual things at all to be compared with
our conceptions of natural things, we
must recognize these facts of our bodily
sensations as representing equally sig
nificant truths concerning the things of
-our spiritual consciousness, which are
the sensations of the soul. Personal as
the life of our mind appears, its varied
forms of consciousness are the ways in
which the great forces of the spiritual
universe and of God reveal themselves
to us. One's intellectual life is his re
sponse to the great currents of the king
dom of life which impress the organs of
his mind. His affectional life is the
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effect of his sensitiveness to an atmos
phere of love as real, as powerful, and
as infinite in the realm of the soul, as are
the vibrations of heat in the realm of
nature. For if we would know God
spiritually as we know His works natur
ally we must recognize this mighty
truth, — that the life-forces of the spiritual
universe are as much greater than the
life realized from the influence of those
life-forces in human souls, as the forces
of nature are greater than a man's bodily
powers. The restriction of our appre
ciation of the love and wisdom of the
kingdom of life to the love and the wis
dom which men on earth are conscious
of, is as limiting to the conceptions we
should have of life as it would be limit
ing to the conceptions we have of nature
to think of the muscular powers which
come within our bodily experience
as constituting the whole of nature's
forces. As all nature is crammed with
the mysterious ether through the in
strumentality of which life, heat, attrac-
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tion, actinic force, and many undiscov
ered powers operate to hold the universe
in order and conduct it onward in its
unfolding to ever greater perfection, so
with equal universality of presence and
infinitude of extent is the kingdom of
man's spirit crammed with the living
forces which work for the ever more
complete involution of God in the evo
lution of man. Man's religion, and with
the Christian his conception of Jesus
Christ, is his personal consciousness of
this infinitude of God and of His im
manence in the spiritual life of man ;
and through his worship of Jesus Christ
in word and in deed may they be made
to come practically into his life for his
salvation — that is, for the realization of
the life of God in his soul.
The most marvellous and significant
feature of the natural fact is the com
bination of the personality of one's ex
perience with the infinitude of the forces
producing it. The infinitude of nature
and the limitations of man's conscious-
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ness of it do not contradict each other.
And equally true is the corresponding
spiritual fact that the infinitude of God
and the limitation of man's knowledge
of Him, that His being greater than all
person and yet rightly thought of as a
Person, are with due mutual recognition
united in the spiritual interpretation of
the life of Jesus Christ. As one comes
into a grander conception of the Creator
from a more perfect knowledge of crea
tion, he is apt to lose some of his con
sciousness of God's personal nearness.
But in this interpretation of Christ's
life, both of these essentials of a true
conception of God are realized in the
soul of man. Jesus Christ is in this
understanding of Him more near, more
lovely, more sweet, more precious, and
a more personal presence of God in the
individual life than under the old under
standing of Him ; while at the same
moment we possess a spiritual concep
tion of God as mighty as is the natural
conception which the scientist has of
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the forces of nature. These last we
appropriate to our bodily comfort with
even more personal satisfaction, on ac
count of our knowledge of the infinite
abundance of what we in such infinitesi
mal amounts can make use of. Just as
we delight more in sunshine as an object
of beauty to the senses and of delight
to the body because of our knowledge
that its nature baffles the grasp of man's
intelligence, and that its marvellous
abundance surpasses his imagination ;
and just as from our scientific appre
hension of the heavenly bodies we enter
more appreciatively into the enjoyment
of the beauty of the sunset, the solem
nity of the starlight night and every
other of the numberless forms of gran
deur and loveliness among the visions of
the sky, so correspondingly is our appre
ciation of Jesus Christ as bringing a
personal presence of God to our indi
vidual life made greater by interpreting
Him as the Parable of God. The per

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sonal loveliness of His life is not done
away with by the truth that within it
there is an inconceivably greater spirit
ual loveliness, surpassing the grasp of
our highest intelligence ; rather we enter
into an enjoyment of His adaptation to
our personal needs with a vastly greater
satisfaction on account of our knowledge
that every attribute of His which we
worship is an adaptation to us of that
which, as it exists in Him, is infinitely
more lovely than we can see, — yea, than
we can understand.
To sum it all in one word : By the
symbolic interpretation of the life of
Jesus Christ, God as a Person, and God
as an infinite and all-pervading Force ;
God as a loving Father, interested in
the minutest features of my personal
welfare, and God incarnating himself
during the ages through the evolution
of universal man ; God the known and
God the unknowable ; God the Saviour
of man, and God the Creator of the

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universe ; in a word, God as finited in
man, and God the Infinite, are united
into ONE.
" He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."
" I and the Father are one."

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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